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VANCOUVER - With a law degree in his pocket and hockey in his heart, Jon Cooper decided in his 30s that he wanted to coach professionally. Naturally, he started in Texarkana on the east Texas border.

By that age, Rick Bowness had finished an eight-year journeyman career as a player and was getting his first stint as a head coach in the National Hockey League. Texarkana is one of the few places Bowness hasn’t been in his 38-year pro career.

Until Bowness joined Cooper’s coaching staff with the Tampa Bay Lightning in June, the closest their career paths came to intersecting was in British Columbia, where Cooper is from and Bowness coached the last seven years as Alain Vigneault’s top assistant on the Vancouver Canucks.

“It’s a totally different path,” Bowness said Wednesday of the route and he and Cooper took to Tampa. “When I went to Toronto to interview with him, I had to Google Jon. Seriously, I knew nothing about him. So at the interview, he’s interviewing me, but I was sort of interviewing him as well.

“Let me see, you gave up a law practice and went to Texarkana, Texas to coach junior hockey? And then you’ve done all this? OK, I like that. The common bond we have is passion for the game.”

Bowness, 58, and Cooper, 46, may seem an odd couple — except for their obvious amiability — but they have helped the Lightning rebound from two disappointing seasons under former head coach Guy Boucher.

Despite a handful of injuries, including a broken leg suffered Nov. 11 by superstar Steve Stamkos, the Lightning were 23-12-4 and tied for third in the Eastern Conference before facing the Canucks on Wednesday night.

It was Bowness’s first game back in Vancouver since he was fired with Vigneault and assistant Newell Brown last spring, and Cooper’s first game in his home province as a coach. At any level.

Cooper was born and raised in Prince George, played for the Notre Dame Hounds in Wilcox, Sask., then attended Hofstra University in New York on a lacrosse scholarship.

Cooper played only one season of college hockey before going to law school in Michigan. He worked as a defence attorney before trading one bench for another and submitting to the siren call of hockey.

He landed his first real coaching job in 2003 with the Texarkana Bandits of the junior North American Hockey League.

“I’ll tell you right now, the NHL, I never thought this was the path I was going to take,” Cooper said after the Lightning’s morning skate at Rogers Arena.

“I enjoyed law. It was a great life experience for me. I was actually going to get into the agent business; that’s really where I was going. But hockey was just ingrained. (I’m from) Prince George.

“Fortunately, I went one day down the fork in the road and it just came back with me. I just felt I was young enough I could do this full time and see where it was going to take me. And, lo and behold, it has taken me to Rogers Arena.”

Cooper joked that he asked Canuck general manager Mike Gillis for a share of gate receipts Wednesday due to all the friends and family members the Tampa coach had coming to the game.

But Cooper owed Gillis, too. He said had Gillis not fired Bowness when he did on May 22, he and general manager Steve Yzerman were ready to hire someone else.

After a decade of winning in the NAHL, United States Hockey League and AHL, Cooper was promoted from the Lightning’s minor-league team in Syracuse to replace Boucher last March 25.

Yzerman liked Cooper, but believed an NHL rookie coach needed an experienced assistant. Their search was nearing conclusion when Bowness suddenly became available.

One day later, Yzerman called Gillis and was given permission to approach Bowness.

“He called me and said: ‘This is Steve Yzerman of the Tampa Bay Lightning,’ ” Bowness laughed Wednesday. “Like he needed to introduce himself. But that’s the kind of guy Stevie is.

“One of the appeals of coming to Tampa was to work with Jon. It’s more me sitting back and watching how he does things and adjusting to him. He’s the head coach and he’s the perfect coach for this team. I’m just here to support him any way I can.”

As he did in Vancouver, Bowness works primarily with the defence. But he is also Cooper’s consigliere, a resource for the head coach on everything NHL — from travel to player rest to practice times.

“Rick Bowness has been a wealth of information for me,” Cooper said. “I don’t really consider myself a rookie coach. But I’m a rookie to the NHL and this is a league that I needed some guidance. He’s just been phenomenal.”

Bowness raves about the Lightning organization, from owner Jeff Vinik and Yzerman on down. He said he sees similarities between the Lightning roster, which has eight rookies, and the Canucks when Vigneault and Bowness arrived in 2006.

“The torch was being passed (from older players) to guys like Daniel and Henrik (Sedin) and Kevin Bieksa,” Bowness said.

“And we worked with that group and got them to the point where we took a run at the Stanley Cup.

“That’s where we are in Tampa. We’ve got a lot of good young players.

“Give them a few more years, we’re going to be a real solid hockey club.”

As excited as he is about his new team, Bowness can’t forget his last one.

“For seven years, we were committed to Vancouver,” he said.

“You put your whole life into it. To say, ‘OK, I’m fired,’ then walk away — I’m not built like that. I just can’t flip a switch. Today, when I came in, I saw Kevin with his son, Cole. I remember when Cole was born. Those memories and attachments, you just can’t walk away from.”

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